


Grieving Ghosts

by howldax



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Suicide, Sacrifice Chloe Ending, Vortex Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 22:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13936458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howldax/pseuds/howldax
Summary: There's a lot for everyone to deal with, even in this timeline where the birds aren't dying and there's only one moon in the sky. Max may be the only one who remembers everything, but they all have their share of trauma.





	Grieving Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> am i physically capable of writing more than one fic per piece of media? probably not, at this point
> 
> i didn't want to clog up the tags, so extra warnings here: brief emeto (mention), references/mentions of what happened in the Dark Room, mentions of Jefferson's manipulation of Nathan, parents being terrible, discussions of Kate's situation... all fairly canon-typical stuff, nothing extreme. i write Nathan and Victoria very sympathetically, as i've always viewed them that way - if you hate either or both of them then you probably won't like this fic!
> 
> also: i didn't write this as a Max/Vic piece, but feel free to interpret it that way - i didn't put it in their ship tag bc it's not a ship fic, but it's pretty open to interpretation

"You'll think I'm an asshole," Victoria says, her breath hot and smelling very strongly of red wine.   
  
"I already think you're an asshole, Victoria," Max shouts back, trying not to be drowned out by the heavy bass of the music. It's not necessarily true - well, it is, but Max knows that there are other sides to her now, too. There's bitchy, asshole Victoria, and Victoria who collects anime figurines, and the insecure Victoria who's so terrified of failure that she tried to seduce and then blackmail her way to a good grade, even though her photography is totally good enough to win contests.   
  
There's Victoria who sent Kate a card and flowers and, apparently, spent the day after Kate's attempt crying in her room. There's Victoria who's completely loyal to her best friend, who openly and publicly wept when he was arrested, who pretended (according to Dana) to be his sister, so she could visit him in holding.  
  
"Touché," Victoria says. Her mouth twists in something like a smile, but it's too bitter to quite make it. She takes another deep, deep drink of her wine, direct from the bottle, and offers it to Max. Max shakes her head, clutching her cup of weak, shitty cider with both hands. Victoria obviously wants to get fucked up, but it's not Max's style.   
  
_It could be,_ a little voice says in the back of her brain. _Live a little, hipster._ It sounds, if she really listens, like Chloe.   
  
She doesn't listen. She takes another sip of cider, instead, and looks at Victoria.    
  
"I didn't," Victoria starts, then stops, staring at the bottle in her hands. "I didn't know she'd..."   
  
They're talking about Kate, Max knows. Even with Nathan arrested, with everyone knowing he'd done something terrible and being able to put the pieces together enough to know that it involved the video, Kate had tried to kill herself. This time, Max recognised the signs, didn't bother trying to excuse herself from Mr Jefferson's class, just got up and left. If it weren't for why she was leaving, it would've been incredibly satisfying - when Mr Jefferson held a hand up, began to say "Max, where do you th-", Max looked him directly in the eyes, as much venom in her glare as she could muster, and spat "Go _fuck_ yourselfie."   
  
She didn't stay long enough to hear his next words beyond _"Max,"_ his voice scandalised, but she did glance at Victoria on her way out. There was a gratifying mixture of admiration, surprise and horror warring across her features, and at the moment of eye contact her lips twitched up at the corner, admiration winning out.   
  
Okay, so it was pretty satisfying, even if she felt a little guilty for stealing Victoria's line. Totally worth it.   
  
So Kate had tried to kill herself, again, and Max had talked her down, again, somehow remembering what she'd said last time and - thank god - managing to save her this time, as well.   
  
"I didn't mean for it to be..." Victoria starts again. "I didn't think she'd be so upset about it. I... I thought she was lying because she didn't want people to know what she'd done. Like, her church. I thought she was just embarrassed."   
  
"But you know Nathan drugged her, right?" Max says, and immediately wishes she still had her rewind. Victoria glares at her.   
  
"I didn't know that, when it was all happening," she says. "I didn't know what Mar- what he was doing to Nathan. Making him do. I thought she got wasted and then didn't want her God squad to be mad. I didn't know she didn't want to... to do any of it." Victoria takes a deep, unsteady breath, and tips her head back to drain the last of her bottle. Max watches her throat move. "He's my best friend. I didn't think he'd ever do anything like that. He wouldn't, he never would've, if it hadn't been for-" She cuts herself off, obviously furious.   
  
Max considers laying a hand across hers where it's fisted in her lap, but doesn't. "I know," she says instead. Victoria looks at her with wet eyes.   
  
"We've all done stupid shit at parties," she says. "Once, I was so drunk that I was kissing a girl and I pulled back and threw up all down her shirt. It was so gross, and I was _so_ embarrassed, and of course Nathan had the whole thing on camera and sent it to everyone in the Vortex Club." She laughs, hiccuping a little. "Hayden called me Vomit Queen for a _month_."   
  
"Gross!" Max protests, trying to process the fact that Victoria Chase, Queen Bee and Head Bitch of Blackwell, likes to kiss girls at parties.   
  
"Shut up," Victoria says, her cheeks flushing. "If you'd ever been as wasted as I was, you'd have done the same. Anyway, it's - we all did it to each other. Embarrassing photos, videos, all kinds of shit. Nathan tried to steal the Tobanga, you know?" She laughs again. "He was so fucking high, and he kept trying to scale it, like that would make it easier, and he was saying "come on, Vic, help me!" like _I_ would be able to make a difference -"   
  
Nathan's voice echoes in Max's head, _I'm so sorry, I never wanted to hurt anyone,_ and for a moment she can feel duct tape residue around her wrists. She rubs them, resisting the urge to scratch.   
  
"-and I got the whole thing on tape," Victoria is saying, when Max manages to focus back in. "I sent it to everyone, posted it in the Vortex Club facebook group, and he said he was gonna kill me. He was so mad."   
  
Victoria stops, suddenly, as if she's just remembered that Nathan did help kill people, and the atmosphere tightens, like it's been shrinkwrapped around them.  
  
"We did it to each other," Victoria says again, quietly. "I didn't realise that she was so sensitive. No," she says quickly, "I didn't mean that. Sorry. Fuck, I'm terrible at this." She drags a hand down her face and looks around, spotting Hayden sprawled across a couch a few meters away.   
  
"Hayden!" she yells, and he lolls his head in their direction, flashing a peace sign.   
  
"Yo, what's up, Queen Bee, Max Attack," he says, a little slurred.   
  
"I need a smoke!" Victoria says. The song changes to something a little less bass-heavy - her voice carries easily. Hayden throws a pack, which Victoria catches, and a lighter, which hits Max in the face.   
  
Hayden bursts out laughing, and so does Victoria, and a moment later Max is laughing too, suddenly glad she can't rewind. She would've, embarrassed as hell, but this is better than catching it.  
  
"Thanks, babe," Victoria tells Hayden, and he flashes another peace sign, already looking around for another beer, his interest in them lost. "You mind?" she asks Max, and though something in her chest clenches up, the image of Chloe smoking weed on her bed in her mind's eye, she shakes her head. Victoria lights up, taking a drag and managing to blow a smoke ring towards the ceiling. Max claps, because it feels like that's what she's supposed to do. Victoria regards her through one half-open eye.   
  
"Nate taught me that," she confides, then sighs. "I didn't realise Kate really meant it, when she was being all," she waves a hand. "Mopey, and quiet. Or... that's not true, I guess." She takes another drag of the cigarette. Max spent enough time around Chloe, in the other timeline, that she was used to the smoke. She coughs despite herself, because in this timeline she never got to see Chloe, stretched out across her covers, punk shirt riding up to show her hipbones and her bellybutton, smoke filling the room around them. She never got to kiss Chloe, the sun filtering lazily in around them, the taste of smoke on Chloe's tongue, and then in both their mouths. She got, instead, to watch Chloe die in a shitty, grimy bathroom, never knowing Max's touch on her skin, and for a moment the grief overwhelms her.  
  
Victoria's hand on her shoulder brings her out of her memories. "Maxine?" she says, sounding almost concerned. "I can put it out."   
  
The alternate future - another alternate future, too many to keep track of by now - rears its ugly head, and Max says, feeling like she's still caught in time even though that's over now, dead and gone, "Max, never Maxine."   
  
"Sorry," Victoria says. "It's a nice name, you know. I don't see why you're so ashamed of it."   
  
"It's not me," Max says, and luckily Victoria takes the hint and drops the subject. _Maxine?_ says the little Chloe-voice in Max's head. _Who the fuck is Maxine?_ She smiles, despite the sting of sadness the memory brings.   
  
"I didn't know that Kate meant it, because I didn't bother to think about it," Victoria says, somehow both stilted and rushed, as though she's confessing something that hurts to admit. "It was a game. It was funny, and we were having fun, and I didn't realise that-" Victoria groans, smokes, breathes. "I didn't realise she had feelings. Or I - I didn't realise they mattered. I don't know! It made me feel powerful, made me feel in control, to poke fun at her and have everyone laugh with me. I was so, so in control, and I'm so out of control, Max-"   
  
She's crying, Max realises suddenly.  
  
"Nathan was acting weird, his mental health shit getting worse and worse, and I couldn't do anything to help, and I was so scared for him, and I was so scared that I wasn't-" Victoria stops, but Max can finish the sentence. "I act like I'm the best," Victoria says, voice heavy, "because I'm terrified that's not the truth. And... if I'm not the best, then I'm nothing."  
  
"Victoria..." Max says, soft, horrified, but she doesn't know what else to say. Victoria sniffs, wiping her nose on a tissue she's produced from somewhere. Someone walks past with a cooler in hand and Victoria snags two beers from its open top, spilling some on her soft, expensive cardigan and barely seeming to notice.   
  
"I didn't see that we were hurting her, because she wasn't me, and she wasn't Nathan, and sometimes I forget that other people are people," Victoria says, taking a deep, ragged breath. "Sometimes it's like - I can only care about me, and about him, and what my parents think, what Ma-" She cuts herself off again, lips pressed tightly together. "What my parents think," she says carefully. "But I don't care about them as people. I don't... love them, Max. I don't think they love me. Or, they don't love me for the right reasons.  
  
"So I care about me, and I care about Nathan, and sometimes I can care about the Vortex Club," Victoria continues, pausing to take a long drink of her beer. Max drains her cup of now-warm cider. "But it's like nobody else is real, sometimes. Not properly. It's like I'm in a simulation, and only Nathan and I are real. Everyone else is just a background character, so I'm mean, but it doesn't matter, because nothing means anything and it makes me feel better, and that's all that matters."   
  
There's silence, and then, "Wowzer," Max says softly, and immediately she wants to take it back, it's so inappropriately childish, but suddenly Victoria is laughing through her tears, shoulders shuddering.  
  
"Wowzer?" she mimics, and laughs even harder. Max can feel herself going bright red; she steals the other beer from where Victoria put it on the floor, taking a drink and screwing up her nose. "I can't believe I was so jealous of someone who says wowzer."   
  
"You were jealous of me?" Max says, genuinely startled.   
  
"So jealous," Victoria says, still laughing a little, but it fades. "You were always his favourite."   
  
The Dark Room flashes before her eyes, Jefferson's dark eyes intent, the flash of the camera against her sore, tear-red eyes. "It wasn't all it's cracked up to be," Max says, her voice suddenly thready. She sees Victoria with her there, lying on the floor - the somehow worse absence of her the next time she woke up. Knowing that Victoria was dead. Ultimately, being his favourite hadn't helped Max one bit. She'd died, over and over, in that room, stopping time a millisecond before the bullet hit so many times that she could feel her powers aching like an overworked muscle.   
  
Victoria shrugs apologetically. "Sorry. I wanted it so bad, and I hated that you got it."   
  
"What, his favouritism?"  
  
"Well, yes," Victoria says, crushing her cigarette butt into a nearby ashtray. "But I would've been happy with just his attention. Even a fraction of the, the intensity he had for you. I craved it." She looks at her lap. "Stupid. All that time he was manipulating my best friend into - into doing that shit for him. And I was _flirting_ with him. It could've been me next."   
  
"He was going to kill you," Max says thoughtlessly, before she remembers that in this timeline she never went to the Dark Room, never saw the empty file with Victoria's name. Shit. "I mean, I can't imagine he wasn't, y'know? You were - you are Nathan's best friend. He needed Nathan to feel completely alone, except for Jefferson."   
  
_YOURS IS THE ONLY VOICE I TRUST._  
  
"He would've killed you, too," Victoria says. "He was so..."   
  
"Obsessed," Max says. "Fixated. You know this isn't a competition, right?"   
  
"He totally would've killed you first," Victoria says, corners of her mouth twitching. "I would've won."   
  
Max thinks again of that empty, white floor. A scuff of dirt where Victoria's shoes had scraped against it. "Neither of us won," she says, suddenly exhausted down to her bones. Victoria's little smile dies in place. She reaches over and takes Max's hand. Her skin is a little sweaty, overly warm with alcohol.   
  
Chloe's skin was always a little warmer than Max's, too. She runs cold.   
  
"I didn't mean it," Victoria says. "I don't know what would've happened. I know it's not something to joke about, not really. I'm just..."   
  
"Coping," Max says. "We all are." She squeezes Victoria's hand.   
  
"I need Kate to know I'm sorry," Victoria says.   
  
"She's forgiven you already. Don't tell her I told you."   
  
Victoria almost sags with relief, her shoulder leaning against Max's. "For real?"  
  
"Hella for real," Max says, and her heart aches. Victoria snorts, but doesn't comment on it, and Max is grateful. She's not sure she could take it, right now. Victoria leans down a little further, resting her head on Max's shoulder.   
  
"I miss him so much," she whispers, breath warm against Max's neck. Something that could've been a sob comes out as a sigh, instead, and her hand tightens in Max's. "I know... I know he fucked up. But it's not his fault. He's scared. He's always been scared. His father..."   
  
Max remembers the emails, the cold impersonal way in which Sean Prescott talked about his son. Nathan in the Two Whales, telling her angrily that his dad's an asshole, like he was daring her to agree. _Wait until my father hears._ Nathan curled up on the floor of the boy's dorm, sobbing incoherently, bruises and blood marring his pale, pale face. _I own this school._ He hadn't cried out for anyone, Max remembers, definitely not for his father. He'd just wanted Warren to stop, begged him for mercy. _Everyone hates me... everyone._  
  
Max can't look at Warren the same, anymore. He's hurt by it, she can tell, but she can't exactly tell him that she's scared of him for something he did in a universe that doesn't exist anymore, a timeline she destroyed. The violence she'd never realised he had in him in the first place.   
  
Max realises that Nathan felt out of control, too. Maybe that's why he and Victoria were drawn to each other - are so loyal to each other, despite everything. Even before everything with Jefferson, Nathan was alone, and unstable, and terrified, maybe for his whole life, and it made him an easy target.   
  
The hatred of Sean Prescott that rises in her is unexpected, to say the least, but she's always been a bleeding heart.   
  
"I'm so sorry, Victoria," she says, throat tight, and her apology echoes in her ears, the cold ground of the junkyard beneath her knees, her hands on Chloe's back as she vomits, Rachel's unmarked grave open before them. _I'm so sorry, Chloe._  
  
_I killed you._  
  
Max's eyes are filled with tears, and she can't tell who they're for anymore. Maybe they're for all of them. Nathan, manipulated and coerced and broken by a man who'd treated him like a son into committing atrocities. Victoria, desperate for approval, dead in timelines Max can't seem to forget, trying to figure out how to be normal and falling into cruelty instead.   
  
Chloe, her blue hair tucked into her ratty beanie, her excited, manic smiles giving way to fury and back again in moments. Her hand warm and steady in Max's as they walk along the train tracks, tugging her down the stairs, up the stairs, into bed. Wherever Chloe wanted them to go. Max would've followed her to the ends of the earth.   
  
Chloe, barely an adult, buried in her favourite band shirt and ripped skinny jeans because Joyce knew that's what she would've wanted. Chloe, dying in a school she hated, in a town she hated, never hearing Max's apologies for leaving her, never knowing that Max would've rather died than leave her again.   
  
But Max isn't the one who died. Chloe died, and Max lived, and she doesn't deserve it. Chloe was always the one full of life, the one who belonged to it. Max feels, sometimes, like she did die in the Dark Room, and this is some kind of elaborate hallucination cooked up by her dying brain. She died, because it's what she deserved, because Chloe deserved to live and Max took that away from her the moment she stepped into that bathroom.   
  
She cries, selfishly, for herself, because sometimes being alive without Chloe is so painful that she doesn't know how to bear it.   
  
Victoria must feel her shudder with the effort of keeping quiet, of not letting her sobs rip free from her chest, because she sits up and looks closely at Max's face. The hand not holding Max's comes up to her face, her thumb stroking away one of Max's tears.   
  
"I'm sorry," Max says wretchedly. "I'm so sorry."   
  
"It's not your fault," Victoria says, obviously confused, a little line between her perfectly styled eyebrows. "Are you... is this about Nathan?"   
  
"It's..." Max trails off. She's seen so much, been through so much, and none of it is real to anyone else. Nobody else remembers.   
  
She's grieving ghosts, grieving dreams, and she's utterly, completely alone.   
  
Some of it must come out, because Victoria's red-rimmed eyes are on hers, and there's something between sympathy and pity in them. The music has kicked up again, the bass in time with Max's heartbeat.   
  
"Chloe was my best friend," Max says, as Victoria opens her mouth to speak. _She was my everything,_ she doesn't say, but she thinks Victoria might be able to tell there's something more. "I never got to say goodbye."   
  
Chloe's lips on hers, desperate and passionate and terrified, the wind of the storm whipping their hair against their faces. They'd clung to each other, Chloe's face cupped between Max's hands, Chloe's hands in Max's hair, knowing that Chloe was going to die, knowing that Max would be alone. Max had been whispering against Chloe's mouth, their chapped lips catching as they made promises they couldn't keep. Their faces had been wet with rain and tears, the kiss turning salty with crying, and letting go of that to look at the photo had been the hardest moment of Max's life. As she felt it pulling her in she'd heard Chloe say, "Goodbye, Max," in that terrible, fake-casual way she said things when she was trying not to fall apart, and Max had tried to look away, to look Chloe in the eyes and say it back, say that she loved her more than life itself, that she would've died to let Chloe live, but she'd been pulled back in time before she could even turn her head.   
  
"I never got," Max chokes, and there's no stopping her tears now, rolling hot down her cheeks as a knife twists and twists and _twists_ into her chest.   
  
"I'm sorry," Victoria says, quiet and sincere, her voice raw, and it seems so strange that this is happening now, with her, at a fucking Vortex Club party, but at the same time there's something inevitable about it. This is where Kate was drugged, where the mystery all began.   
  
Everything had been falling apart long before that - when Jefferson came to town, maybe, or when the Prescotts came to town, or maybe even when William left to save Joyce a bus ride and never came back - but the Vortex Club was the catalyst. Something simmering and dark in the underbelly of Arcadia Bay had exploded into something that couldn't be ignored.   
  
"I miss her so much," Max says. "She didn't even know." Chloe in another timeline had known, but the Chloe in this timeline didn't. She'd died, thinking she was unloved, thinking Max never came back, and no version of Chloe deserved that pain.  
  
"I'm sorry, Max," Victoria says again, even quieter, her thumb still resting on Max's cheek. She leans forward and presses a kiss to Max's forehead, just above the bridge of her nose, then one on each cheek, and then she lifts Max's hand and presses a kiss to the back of her shaking fingers. She repeats the process.  
  
The third time Victoria repeats the motions, Max feels her tears dry up. She sucks in a shaky, painful breath, and focuses on the feeling of Victoria's soft lips brushing against her skin. Grounding her.   
  
Another few repeats, and Victoria stops. "I do that with Nathan, when he needs to feel real," Victoria says, so quiet that Max can barely hear her. "It usually helps."   
  
"Thanks," Max says, feeling empty but calm, feeling guilty for hijacking Victoria's emotional troubles with her own. Victoria wipes away some of the tear tracks leaving salty, sticky residue down Max's cheeks, using her tissue from earlier, before doing the same to herself a little more discreetly. It's lucky they're in a corner, Max thinks; nobody seems to have been paying them any attention.   
  
"This party blows," Victoria says. "Let's go back to the dorms. I'll walk you to your room."   
  
Max thinks about arguing, about saying that she doesn't need an escort, but being... whatever's going on, with Victoria, is much better than how they were before this all started. They could be friends, perhaps, Max thinks. Shared trauma does a lot to bring people together, and they've both been more honest tonight with each other than Max ever thought possible.   
  
This side of Victoria, the one who confesses her fears and her jealousies, who wipes Max's tears and fiercely defends her best friend, whose heart is obviously aching for him - this side of Victoria that struggles for words because she wants to make sure they're the right ones, who still tries to one-up Max in a hypothetical death situation-   
  
This is her favourite side to Victoria so far. 

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know what you think! i eat comments for power, even if i'm terrible at replying to them
> 
> and tysm to Nate for reading this as i wrote it and yelling at me, love you ;3c you're the best!


End file.
